Blogs from Wales, United Kingdom, Europe - page 7

Apparently Shunryu Suzuki who was an American Zen Buddhist monk uttered the words "When we do not expect anything we can be ourselves " This was another of those sayings that cropped up on my rip off once a day calendar and I decided to change the words around a little tiny bit . We do expect a lot from a day and from ourselves . Sometimes we fail miserably . I thought a version of this saying could be "When we do not expect anything we are not disappointed " or perhaps " When we do not expect anything we are very often surprised . Today was a normal swimming day with the plan to try to start swimming 64 lengths of the pool . A mile which should be relatively easy but sometimes these ... read more

It was the eldest daughter's idea. An author friend of hers was presenting at the Hay-on-Wye literary festival. No, unfortunately I was not offered a place to talk about A Patient Obsession, but you can always order it on Amazon and let me know what you think! My launch was at the Newcastle Writers Festival (NSW) and I have given a talk on writing, but only at the local Nambucca library to a group of interested ladies and a few male interlopers! So, the tickets were booked and we were taking Gino, the newly 'made over' Chausson motorhome for a trial run for this year. Hearing that the parking was difficult it seemed sensible to book a camping spot at the Swan Inn, Letton. A lovely small camping site adjacent to the pub over the border ... read more

Well we have started our journey of the Wild Atlantic Way by staying in Wales in a lovely campsite very near Holyhead where tomorrow we will be crossing to Dublin. The campsite is really nice but you will never guess it though when we booked in the lady who was so lovely told me where the pitch was and also that there is a vending machine which has milk from their Jersey cows and eggs. Well I thought a vending machine really? We got to the pitch and she came down and introduced herself and told us once again about the vending machine. Well really sorry but I thought this lady is probably not well as she introduced herself to me a couple of minutes ago and did not recognise me - so did I think ... read more

It does take a long time to settle down once you return home from holiday . All that clothes washing that I intended to do in the house we stayed in came home dirty . Two solid days of washing clothes . We probably took too many clothes this trip . But then it was guesswork as to how many we would need . The dust had settled around the house and needed moving around a bit . The cat had missed us. He had been looked after extremely well but must have missed us as he clung to us for days mewing at our every move . But settle down to normality has naturally occured . The book of the holiday needs to be produced . Looking back at the photographs there are not many ... read more

We picked up our camper van, Art, from Bangor, Wales after a gorgeous and easy ride through the rolling English countryside. Train travel is really the way to go here. I found the van hire on quirky campers.com, which rents out privately owned vehicles all over the UK and elsewhere. Art is lovingly owned by a couple who designed and built it themselves and who travel all throughout Europe, and it is easily our favorite van we've rented yet as far as the design and space goes. The owners left a perfect cd collection of British rock, and Dennis was delighted to be driving through the harrowing narrow winding roadways driving a large manual shift box van whilst listening to Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Iron Maiden. We were lucky to have arrived with no rain, ... read more